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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Wednesday was a mediocre 92-81-137 as the TSX Venture Exchange jumped eight points to 626. Jean-Pierre Jutras's Jade Leader Corp. (JADE), a four-center when it last traded a board lot in mid-June, took the occasion of a chief financial officer swap last week to cheer its presence in the jade market. Recent articles, enthuses Mr. Jutras, "suggest that the international jade market is now larger than the better-known worldwide market for rough diamonds" -- and this "without any participation in the space by publicly-listed companies prior to the formation of Jade Leader."

Details of the jade market are murkier than those for rough diamond sales, but those articles may have a point. Rough diamond sales have averaged about $17-billion (U.S.) annually over the past several years, while sales of jade mined in Myanmar -- home to most producing mines -- was perhaps double that sum. Of course, there are few similarities in the sectors: Diamonds are not carved into statuettes, and annual jade production has averaged about 40 million kilograms in recent years, compared with 24,000 kilograms of diamonds.

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